Completed projects
Early modernists at Sheffield also led or participated in the following projects:
Intoxicants and early modernity
Period: 1560–1740
Funding: ESRC
Details: Creating a public database of sources on the role of alcohol, tobacco, and other intoxicants in England’s economic, social, political, material, and cultural life.
Field: History, Digital Humanities
SCEMS contact: Phil Withington, Angela McShane, James Brown, Tim Wales
Website: intoxicantsproject.org
The acts and monuments online
Period: 1563–1583
Funding: British Academy
Details: An unabridged digitised version of John Foxe’s martyrology, facilitating comparison of the different editions published in Foxe’s lifetime, with prefatory essays.
Field: Book history, martyrology, Digital Humanities
SCEMS contact: Mark Greengrass (em)
Website: johnfoxe.org
The comparative history of political engagement in western and African societies
Period: diachronic
Funding: Leverhulme
Details: Fostering an international network to problematise western models of democracy and explore its origins and history with insight from different disciplines.
Field: Politics, History
SCEMS contact: Mike Braddick
Connected histories: British history sources 1500–1900
Period: 1500–1900
Funding: JISC
Details: Connecting digital resources related to early modern and 19th century Britain with a single federated search that allows sophisticated searching of names, places and dates.
Field: British social, economic and political history, Digital humanities
SCEMS contacts: Robert Shoemaker, Sharon Howard
Website: connectedhistories.org
Early modern manuscript poetry: recovering our scribal heritage
Period: 1500–1700
Funding: AHRC
Details: Produced scholarly editions of: Elizabethan verse libels; a household book compiled in Yorkshire; V&A MS Dyce 44 (incl. Constable’s Diana sonnets & an encrypted copy of Nashe’s Choise of Valentines); and BL MS Harl. 7392, probably compiled by Humphrey Coningsby, an associate of Philip Sidney.
Field: Literature, History, Paleography
SCEMS contacts: Cathy Shrank, Alan Bryson
Locating London’s past
Funding: JISC
Details: Search a wide body of digital resources relating to early modern and eighteenth-century London, and map the results on to a GIS compliant version of John Rocque’s 1746 map.
Field: Social history, historical geography, GIS
SCEMS contacts: Robert Shoemaker, Sharon Howard
Website: locatinglondon.org
London lives: crime, poverty and social policy in the metropolis
Period: 1690–1800
Funding: ESRC
Details: A wide range of primary sources about eighteenth-century London in fully digitised and searchable form, with a particular focus on plebeian Londoners.
Field: Social history, Digital Humanities
SCEMS contacts: Robert Shoemaker, Sharon Howard
Website: londonlives.org
Old Bailey proceedings online
Period: 1674–1913
Funding: AHRC
Details: A fully searchable, digitised collection of all surviving editions of the Old Bailey Proceedings from 1674 to 1913, and of the Ordinary of Newgate’s Accounts between 1676 and 1772.
Field: Social history, legal history, Digital Humanities
SCEMS contact: Robert Shoemaker, Sharon Howard
Website: oldbaileyonline.org
The origins of Early Modern literature
Period: 1519–1579
Funding: AHRC
Details: Furthered understanding of an overlooked period, producing a searchable catalogue of Tudor writing, and the Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature.
Field: Literature, Digital Humanities
SCEMS contact: Cathy Shrank
Participating in search design: a study of George Thomason’s English newsbooks
Period: 1649–1660
Funding: AHRC
Details: Digitising mid-17th century news books became an opportunity for research into digital search design, inviting end-users to participate in search tool development.
Field: History, Literature, Digital Humanities
SCEMS contacts: Mike Braddick, Marcus Nevitt
Sheffield King James Bible Project
Period: 1520–2011
Funding: AHRC
Details: Produced Telling Tales of King James’ Bible (Exhibition and educational resource package, with digital companion, The UnAuthorized Bible) used in cathedrals and churches around the UK for 400th anniversary. Also conference “Biblical Literacy and the Curriculum”.
Field: Biblical studies, book history, religious education
SCEMS contact: Iona Hine
Website: sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/sheffield-explores-bible-1.174227